Brief
Overview/ Introduction
The topic of the session was ICT
& World Change- Past, Present, and Future. There are numerous aspects of
ICT, but for this session, we mainly focused on the Mass Media, the Internet, Wireless
technology, and interactive telecommunications. As the title indicates, we
basically discussed the past, present, and future situations and application of
the different areas of ICT during the session. We also discussed about whether,
presently, we have successfully discovered and utilised the full potential and advantages
of ICT; what barriers might be hindering us from attaining efficient usage of
ICT, as well as on how we should and could do in the near future in order to capture
and take advantage of the full potential
of ICT. However, nothing is perfect; everything is two-sided, having both
benefits and disadvantages or risks, which is why we also talked about the
risks that are inherent in the usage of ICT.
Interesting
Observations & Ideas
The
different areas of ICT:
Mass MediaàWe
began the topic by looking and discussing about the different areas of interest
in ICT. Mass media was first. Prashant gave us a very simple yet accurate
definition of Mass media: Media that allows you to connect and communicate with
a large number of people at the same time. The early forms of media, books, television,
the early internet, shared the common trait of being passive interfaces, which
meant that they only allowed a 1-way interaction, from the sources to the
users, but not vice versa. Furthermore, information from the early forms of
mass media were generally obtained from a single or a limited number of sources,
a one-to-many interface. However, as mass media developed and evolved, the
number of sources increased, leading to more sophisticated consumer who in turn
demanded for more access to a greater variety of information. In addition, mass
media became a platform enabling interactive communication with the public. Instead
of merely being fed information, consumers in turn, were able to share their
own knowledge and ideas, to share their ideas and give feedback. In a way, it
changed the way companies marketed their products as they were no longer
generating solutions and products solely based on their internal ideas and
vision, but based on consumers’ needs and wants, thereby increasing the
efficiency and effective of businesses, as well as consumers’ level of satisfaction.
Then again, this increased access to a wide-range of information resulted in an
increased risk of being exposed to unreliable and useless information. This highlights
the importance of analytical skills that Prof advised us on last week. In order
to correctly make use of ICT and technology in general, we must be able to
discern the value and reliability of whatever information we are given.
The Internet:àSimilar
to the mass media, the internet first started out with a very passive interface,
but subsequently enabled and encouraged the sharing of knowledge and
information as it progressed. Right now, we are in the process of moving from web
2.0, where most of the information are contributed by the users (Wikipedia,
Amazon, etc.) to web 3.0. Web 3.0 is not only the continuation of web 2.0, whereby
information is personalised, presented and given to users or consumers based on
their individual preferences and needs, but it is also a version of the
Internet which is invisible and inherent in devices or objects everywhere, and
not just confined to computers. This is really cool, as it makes life a lot
easier. Imagine my being able to control the devices in my house as I am at
school. In fact, I think I don’t even have to control them, the internet is
forecasted to allow device-to-device communication, for example, as I am on my
way home from work, the gps tracking device in my phone or whatever could detect
my journey and then notifies the aircon in my room, for example, that I’m
reaching soon and then it will on automatically so my room will be nice and
cool by the time I reach home. Amazing!! I definitely can’t wait for that to
happen. But! As usual, nothing is perfect; this means giving up your privacy. However,
I agree with Prof, if strict measures are put in place to protect personal information
from falling into the hands of the wrong people, then this should not be a
problem.
Social networkingàSocial
networking is another example of how ICT has expanded our network and
accessibility, it has enabled us to reach out to people or opportunities that
we would never have dreamt about meeting. I have an Instagram friend who found
her live partner through Facebook. In fact, I would never have dreamt about
becoming close friends with that Australian Instagram user were it not for
Instagram, unless I were to either go over, vice versa. Honestly, it’s really
wonderful to see how technology has enriched our lives.
Crowd Sourcing:àSocial
networking, in a way, is one of the tools which facilitates the other useful
aspects of ICT- Crowd Sourcing. Crowd sourcing enables you to reach out to
answers from sources beyond your common network. This aspect of ICT is
exceptionally useful as you can obtain solutions from a wide-range of
perspectives, giving you the luxury of choice. Hmm…with this abundant availability
of choices and solutions…I guess this is where the importance of analytical
skills comes in again right?
Gamingà
over
the years, we have seen how gaming technology can be meaningfully applied to all
sorts of areas other than pure entertainment, for example in education,
organisational training, healthcare, etc. Games, when applied to education can
potentially be very powerful, for as Prof said, children remember and learn
better from what they see and experience in games. I am especially interested
in how games can be developed to help senile people, as Prof mentioned, having
a grandmother with dementia myself. I found this video on Dr. Adam Gazzaley, a
neurologist at the University of California San Francisco, who has been
researching the effects of brain games and other mental exercises for
preventing or delaying dementia and other mental disorders. In the video, he
explains to us how certain games can help to delay and even prevent dementia as
one ages:
Interactive
telecommunicationsà one of the important
points brought up during the session and in some of the readings I the transition
to peer-to-peer or device-to-device networks. As mentioned under the Internet
section above, devices will soon be able to communicate and interact not only
with human users but to other devices as well. Devices will become much more integrated
and interconnected with one another, and they will soon be able to carry out
activities automatically without the need for a user to give commands. Wouldn’t
this allow a much higher level of efficiency with regards to daily activities? I was looking out the window over dinner today
and seeing the various construction sites around me (apartments have been
springing up one after another around my condo for the past 5 years. There are
3 projects carried out currently. Ugh. ) I was wondering how much faster these
constructions would be carried out if the cranes and drills, etc., could
interact with one another and work automatically without needing a human to operate
them. Oh how I wish technology could advance at a faster pace so I can finally
get peace and quietness back ahahaha. :B
Cloud Computingàanother
very useful and essential component of ICT is cloud computing, which allows the
usage and access to information that not resident on your personal devices. (e.g
Google Docs, Gmail, etc.) Companies that make use of cloud computing can see their
expenditures decreasing by significant amounts. With cloud computing, these
companies do not have to routinely update and maintain their internal softwares
or intranet. They would just have to source for an external data storage
provider and all these pesky, and extremely costly, responsibilities can
disappear from their hands. They would just have to care about being punctual
with regards to their monthly subscription payments to these external
providers, or something of the like. This not only helps to save money, but it
also frees up the companies’ resources and manpower. These companies would only
need a small IT department, and its other employees can concentrate on doing
other tasks which are more meaningful and beneficial to the company’s goals. I recalled
that during that this was precisely the case during my 2-month attachment back
in poly.
Knowledge Managementàinevitably,
knowledge management, being an integral part of ICT, was discussed. With the
diverse availability and access to all sorts of information that results from
the development and progress of ICT, the most important skill to fully benefit
from this technology is analytics and data management. We have to be able to
differentiate good data from the bad, and then rely on those good data. After
which, in order to transform those good data that you have gathered into
valuable information, you have to present and organise them in a meaningful
way, according to your needs. Knowledge is then generated when the information
is spread and shared to those that matter to you (e.g employees of your company),
and finally wisdom is created when everyone is able to apply the knowledge and
data according to different situations and scenarios. Not only are you then
able to effectively analyse data and use them for decision making, it also aids
problem detection where you recognise outliers or problematic occurrences by
knowing the regular and appropriate patterns. This is also brought up in
reading 1, under the point on ‘putting e-commerce and trade strategies together’.
It is stated that one of the key challenges of making e-commerce truly global is
policymakers’ lack of ‘analytical tools to identify and craft policy
accordingly.’
Moving on to the discussion on
whether we have successfully captured the full potential of ICT, one of the
factors that limits our being able to fully take advantage of the opportunities
for ICT is the Digital Divide. Technology is mostly available to only those who
can afford it, making them inaccessible for poorer nations. It is therefore
essential to overcome this challenging barrier with regards to the gap in
accessibility, by making significantly reducing the cost of ICT and making it
available to every adult, child, all around the world. Only then can we truly
capture the full potential of ICT. This urgent need to remove the digital
divide and its hindrance to the successful employment of ICT is evident in the
comparatively small productivity gain we’ve obtained from the Information age
(5x compared to 25x in previous revolutions). We have a long way to go and
numerous areas of ICT are still unexplored.
Another obstacle in our progress was
mentioned in one of the readings- the lack of appropriate managerial and
organisational infrastructure and knowledge in companies. Managerial encouragement
and leadership in innovation is essential to creating environments where
ICT-enabled business models can thrive. Telecommunication deregulation was also
cited as a possible means to increase the benefit we receive from ICT as it
affects the price, quantity and diffusion of the internet and wireless
connections.
As previously mentioned, everything
that has upsides has downsides too. The risks of ICT includes Espionage, loss
of privacy, identity thefts, just to name a few. However, technology is
neutral, as Prof once said, it is the person who uses it that is either good or
bad, and there will always be people who will use technology for bad motives.
Key
takeaway points:
This has been a very insightful and
eye-opening session once again. Nevertheless, the key takeaway point from this
session would be the importance of knowledge management and analytical skills. It
is useless to have an extensive source of information if we aren’t able to pick
out those that are truly beneficial and appropriate for our needs.
Session
Rating: 9/10! :D The session is
the most interesting one to me thus far.
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